


The Light Fantastic

by WeShallAllBeHealed



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Gen, mirror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:27:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28014663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeShallAllBeHealed/pseuds/WeShallAllBeHealed
Summary: Luxanna Crownguard is on the run. With nothing but the power of friendship, light magic, and anti-mage tactical combat training, it's up to her to travel Runeterra and avert the end of the world. [Mirror: Original is on Sufficient Velocity]
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. Spark 1.1

This far north in Demacia, the cold bites like a wild animal. Clutching your winter cloak to your shoulders, you shiver, and take a moment to feel sorry for all the poor Freljordians who have to live like this all year round. 

“Luxanna.” Your brother’s voice booms, like he’s speaking for an audience only he can see. You love him, but it can get exhausting, one _grave_ and _noble_ proclamation after another to the point that he forgets how to actually _talk_ to people. 

“What?” you reply, dragging the word out in a way that you know will annoy him. 

“Posture. Sit up straight, we can’t ride into Uwendale and have people see you _slouching._ What would everyone think?” 

You roll your eyes and sit up straight. Uwendale is a nowhere town where nothing anybody would think could possibly matter, but saying that will just prompt one of his long speeches about how Crownguards have a reputation to uphold, how the family name means something, the sort of speeches that make you wonder about whether he spends his free time writing them down and memorizing them. 

Of course the cold doesn’t bother him. He’s dressed in full winter armour, with a cape to match. Since you are, as your Aunt Tianna has kept obnoxiously calling you now a good two years into your twenties, a _young lady,_ your armour is more decorative than anything, nothing more than reinforced cloth underneath an expensive breastplate. If you really wanted, you could warm yourself up, conjure up a sunbeam with a thought, but that’s not an option. 

_Rule zero of dealing with mages: There is no such thing as a friendly mage. There is no such thing as ‘safe’ magic. Mages and magic kill people._

You can feel the light playing at your fingertips, longing to be let loose, to shine bright and melt the snow around you. It would be warm and bright and pleasant, and then your life would be ruined, the constant dance of secrecy and lies over at last. It’s almost tempting. The cold doesn’t allow you the luxury of being lost in your thoughts, however, and neither does Garen. “Stay here,” he says, “I’ll speak to the guards.” 

You hardly object; you hate talking to town guards, who all uniformly have a vocabulary of three to four slightly different monosyllabic grunts. They make Mimi, your horse, skittish too. As Garen goes ahead, you bury your face in her mane, which is a much more pleasant experience when it’s not full of snow. Hindsight, you decide as you lean back up with rapidly melting snowflakes on your face, is 20/20. 

“Hi!” says a voice from directly behind you. You don’t _nearly fall off your horse,_ because you’ve been raised better than that, but you do startle, whirling around with your hand halfway to where your sword would be if you had one. 

The girl standing on thin air can’t be any older than fourteen. Her hair floats in the air like it’s underwater, and her eyes reflect a starry night when the sky above you is a cloudy afternoon. She looks _wrong,_ like she’s not really there, like someone painted the world you’re in and a different hand sketched her in with a different brush. This all takes a split second to register before you remember that she’s _floating_ and visions of Mageseekers and prison cells start flashing unprompted into your mind. 

“Oh, you, um, can’t let anyone see you using magic here, I don’t know where you’re from, but,” you splutter, words tumbling out of your mouth in a panic as you turn back around to make sure Garen hasn’t seen her — not that you had cause to worry on that front, your brother continues to have all the keenly honed environmental awareness of a dead mole. She doesn’t seem to listen, however, brushing you off with a laugh that echoes this way and that, like the air itself is laughing alongside with her. 

“I know, I know, we’re in the no-fun-allowed zone, but I’ve got a message for you! A very special message.” She stands up straight, putting a hand on her chest and dramatically clearing her throat, a gesture that’s laughable and at the same time terrifying for a reason you can’t quite place. You nod mutely. 

“Okay, I forgot most of it, but I got the important stuff! It goes, like… something something World Runes, something something assassin, something something Ixtal, something something armageddon, something something fate of the world on your shoulders!”

Each ridiculous word fills the air with something sharp and crackling and portentous. These aren’t any words, these are _prophecy,_ divine truth, and they’re being delivered to you by an inattentive tween treating them like a homework assignment she rushed in the first five minutes of class. You have just enough time for an indignant “Hey, wait, what?” before the girl leaps backwards, diving gracefully into a shimmering golden portal, voice trailing off as she vanishes. 

“Woohoo, you’ve just been heralded, I’m so good at thiiiiiiiiiiis...” 

You’re left sitting in the ozone air, brain trying and failing to process what just happened to the point where it takes the second “Luxanna!” for you to realize your brother is calling you. The guards are opening the town gates as he rides back over towards you. “It is just as King Jarvan suspected. More mage activity than ever before, and the town guard believe the rebels to be based in the mountains.” 

“Uh-huh,” you muster, trying to hold a conversation while the floating girl’s words bounce around in your brain like a caged mongoose. “I still don’t see why _we_ had to ride all the way out here to ask them that. At least it’s exercise!” 

“That’s the spirit, little sister. One day you’ll understand, when you’re old enough to be entrusted with all the duties of a Crownguard, after you’ve taken the Mageseeker exam. It’s in our name, even! We’re the king’s hands, his eyes and ears across the kingdom.”

The king’s eyes, you think to yourself, must be blind. You’ve read the Mageseeker handbook cover to cover, practically memorized it, been taught every technique and strategy for fighting mages from the moment you could read, and you could never, ever, join their ranks. 

“Now, now, I know it’s a great weight to shoulder, but I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it, Luxanna,” says Garen in a lower boom that he must think, somehow, is comforting, clearly taking your silence to mean you’re overwhelmed at the prospect of the responsibility. It’s irritating, but endearing. You offer him a smile. 

“No problem, I’ll just keep looking on the bright side!” you say, a private joke you can share with yourself. Garen opens his mouth to offer a good-natured reply before his expression changes, and he whirls around by some premonition, the arrow that would have gone straight through his eye instead embedding itself in one of his shoulderguards. 

“It’s an ambush,” he spits, “Luxanna, behind me. Dishonorable swine, fight me face to face!” 

Like actors waiting for a cue, a trio of mages emerge from the woods. Their leader is tall, bearded, with the crooked grin of someone who knows in his heart that if it’s him against the world, he has a fighting chance. It’s the two heavy chains that he carries, however, that make him instantly recognizable to anyone who’s seen the wanted posters. 

“Incredible,” roars Sylas of Dredgbourne, the fugitive leader of Demacia’s nascent mage rebellion, “The princeling really believed I’d attack _Uwendale?_ I’m almost offended you took the bait.” 

Your brother, the honorable, chivalrous fool that he is, opens his mouth to spit back some indignant oath, which is all the pause Sylas needs. The chains fly through the air quickly enough that you could miss the movement if you blinked, one moment trailing through the snow and the next wrapped around Garen’s throat, pulling him off his horse in one fluid motion. The town guards rush forward to help and are felled by the other mages, one of them impaled by a shard of ice and the other levitated off the ground, thrown against a wall and broken like a ragdoll. 

You’re frozen in place, like you’re watching this from outside your body, motionless and terrified. You want to help, to burst into light and colour, to release your magic in a dazzling singularity and blind Sylas, rush to Garen’s side -- but you know that if you do, if Garen finds out, you’ll become the enemy. Sylas steps forward, kicking the sword out of Garen’s gauntleted hand as the chains tighten around his armour, which groans and buckles. He looks up at you and the smile fades. He looks genuinely regretful as he whispers, 

“This is your chance, little light. Run.” 

Whatever you do now, you’re going to lose a brother. Lessons are flying through your head, a way of thinking hammered into you, the bread and butter of any Demacian military education, anti-magic tactics. 

_Identify the enemy._

A telekinetic, a cryokinetic, and Sylas. His magic? The chains, you can only assume, moving too fluidly and too naturally for him to just be swinging them.

_Evaluate your position._

Get close, and one of those chains will be wrapped around your neck. Try and widen the gap, use your range, you’re still vulnerable to the other two.

_Evaluate your tools._

The light you create is hard, solid as steel, for a few crucial seconds before it explodes into pure energy. 

_Make a plan. The less moving parts, the better. Magic, and pardon my Noxian, Lady Crownguard, has a way of fucking everything up._

If you time it right, urge Mimi into a gallop, make yourself a moving target, anticipate the attack, shield yourself with light, and then conjure it around his ankles, solid enough to trip him if only for a few seconds, you might buy Garen the time he needs to get back on his feet. 

And then he’ll still know, and your life will be over. Or maybe you’ll fail, you won’t time it right, and the telekinetic will crush your head like a bird cracking open a nut with its beak, and you’ll die for nothing. 

You only have a split second to decide, and you feel the light surging within you, the warmth under your skin, the crackle at your fingertips. The air has that sharp, acerbic scent of magic to it, and this time it’s coming from you. In this split-second, you have to decide whether to fight or flee. 


	2. Spark 1.2

Every fiber in your body is screaming at you to run. But you can’t leave Garen to die, not even if trying to save him could be the last decision you ever make. At least it’ll be the right one. Reluctantly acting on orders from your heart, your mind starts racing. 

Strangely, it’s the easiest choice. 

That’s one of the lessons you were taught, in Lady Laurent’s morning classes. _ Magic wants to be used. If it isn’t, it’ll bide its time, waiting for an opportunity, and then strike at the worst possible moment, cause a catastrophe.  _

But you don’t have time to think about that now. You dig your heels into Mimi’s sides, and the light bursts out from your hands, covering your body in something impenetrable and bright and weightless, pure blinding colour. A hail of icy blades fly through the air so quickly they’re little more than a whitish-blue blur, and shatter harmlessly against the hard light 

You don’t look at Garen as you maneuver Mimi around the edges of the forest. If you see the look on his face you know that it might cost you seconds that could mean the difference between life and death. Your mind stubbornly insists on imagining it, conjuring up the betrayal, the hatred, the heartbreak. You focus on the light covering your body, heating up, telltale colours sparking. When you create these constructs, they only last a few seconds, and then they explode into flashes of light that blind everyone but you. Concentrating, you detonate your makeshift shield -- to the mages, you and Mimi look like a burst of light, too bright to look at directly, for long enough to charge towards Sylas, rings of light shimmering into existence around his feet as he takes a step. 

Your light is weightless, but it’s still solid. With a growl of frustration, he trips, stumbling through the snow, the chains inadvertently releasing Garen. You finally dare to look at your brother, and it’s a blessing that his own training has kicked in, that he’s scrambling after his sword and not looking at you. 

“You’re braver than I thought. Granted, I had low expectations.” Sylas smirks, climbing to his feet. “Come on, little light, why fight me? It’s your freedom I’m fighting for. If you and Garen win this little bout, you and I will be sharing a prison cell.” 

There’s a glimmer in his eye, a  _ spark,  _ the look people have when their whole life is given over to a goal, when they know their own destiny, ready to do great or terrible things. On some level, he’s right. But he wants to tear down everything you’ve ever known, and more importantly in this moment, he’s willing to kill your brother to do it. 

“Here’s a tip, it’s easier to talk to girls when you aren’t trying to kill their families!” you shoot back, and Sylas shrugs, the smile on his face almost good-natured. The chains are glowing, that same every-colour-at-once glow that lives beneath your skin. 

“Suit yourself,” Sylas answers, and you see the light,  _ your  _ light, coiling into a spiral in front of him, something complex and circular that you don’t have the time to examine before it bursts like nothing  _ you’ve  _ ever created does, a beam of light as thick across as your arm is long that surges through the air, knocking you to the ground with a force as strong as anything you’ve ever felt even though it barely misses you. Mimi startles, running off into the forest, and you mutter some words under your breath that a polite young lady should  _ not  _ know. 

Your hair is singed, you note absently, and immediately chastise yourself for the thought. What are you worried about, Lux, leaving behind a pretty corpse? As you try to get to your feet, you wince, a pain stabbing through your chest. Something there is broken, you’re pretty sure. Damn this stupid, useless, decorative armour. 

You stand up, unsteadily, and see Sylas turn towards Garen just in time to see him he charges at him, with a roar of “For Demacia!”. 

_ I’d have gone for the telekinetic,  _ the detached, tactical part of your brain thinks, while the part of you that feels things is busily screaming with ten layered types of incoherent panic.  _ Garen’s armour make it hard for the ice-shard-thrower to hurt him, and Sylas’ chains mean he needs to at least get in melee range.  _

Shit. The telekinetic. Your eyes glance over the scene, snow and forest and two dead men slumped against the town walls, and there she is, eyes fixed on Garen, raising her hands in some complex motion. 

_ Some mages can perform magic while perfectly still, bound and gagged. These are the exception, and not the rule. Some magic flows from the hands, some from the eyes or mouth or back, but it needs an exit point.  _

With moments to spare, spheres of hard light are coiled around the telekinetic’s hands, holding them in place. She scowls, straining futilely, and Garen hits Sylas full-force, sending the two tumbling into the snow. Your own hands are shaking, and it’s not from the cold. 

From above you, you hear a piercing screech. Raptor knights, you’d seen them sometimes in royal processions or flying through the air over your hometown, even wanted to be one when you were a kid. You remembered running out into the streets to wave up at them, seeing that all the other kids in the neighourhood had the same idea, cheering together on the rare occasion one of them waved back. They must have seen Sylas’ burst of light —  _ your  _ burst of light — from the air, which means that Garen has reinforcements. And, you realize with a chill, that if you’re still here when they land, you’ll be one of their targets. 

You look over the scene. The telekinetic’s hands are badly burned from your makeshift handcuffs exploding onto her hands, the cryokinetic is coated in ice, charging up some other attack, and Garen is standing over Sylas, trying to extricate his sword from the heavy chains wrapped around the blade. He should be fine until the raptors swoop down, you decide, and you don’t know if you really think that or if you’re just terrified, so terrified that you don’t even feel it anymore, just a dull, monotonous constant screaming in the back of your head.

Just before you turn and run into the forest, Sylas looks at you, and he smiles. 

You don’t know how long you run for. It feels like hours. Realistically, it’s less than an hour, maybe even less than thirty minutes. It’s however long it takes you to realize nobody is chasing you, and then however long it takes you to realize that what’s just happened is something you can’t actually outrun on top of that. You stop, sit back against a tree, and cry. 

That probably takes up another half-hour. You cry until there aren’t any tears left, and then you take a deep breath and start thinking. You toy with the idea of trying to survive on your own in the woods, and then immediately discard it, because it’s ridiculous. Going back to Demacia isn’t an option. If you go north, and hike through the mountains (you’ve never hiked iny our life), you could reach the Freljord — an icy landmass, ruled by disparate and warring tribes. You could just as easily freeze to death there looking for civilization as you could find somewhere to spend the night. 

If you go south, you might be able to get to Meltridge, a riverside town half a day’s walk from here. If you keep your head down and use a fake name, you might be able to sail down the river and get on a merchant ship to Shurima, or Ionia, or anywhere that isn’t Demacia. 

Finally, you could leave yourself up to the whims of fate. If you can figure out what Sylas did with your magic and replicate it, launch a pillar of light into the sky, someone might see your beacon and come rescue you. It would also, unfortunately, be the equivalent to strategically setting fire to dozens of trees to spell out  _ Hey, Demacian military, come and arrest me!  _

“Or,” you say out loud to yourself, “I could sit here and wait to get eaten by a bear.” 

No. You’re not going to do that. Things are desperate, but they’re not that desperate. And besides, you’re not sure people make good food for bears, you might give the poor creature indigestion. All that remains now is to wait for the stars to come out so you can navigate and decide which way to go. 


End file.
